Mikel Maria Delgado

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Friday Faves March 27, 2015

The cuteness may not last long, thanks to climate change

Everyone on the internet is agog over the adorable ila pika, an endangered small mammal that is part of the taxonomic order Lagomorpha (rabbits are also Lagomorphs). The ila pika is undeniably cute and undeniably in trouble. Due to climate change, these little guys are moving higher and higher to find snow. This is the first photograph of an ila pika in 20 years.

Monkeys get depressed?

Okay, it depressed me that this research was done in a primate breeding facility (macaques are the lab rats of the primate research world), but researchers are suggesting that they observed similarities in depressive body language and behaviors in monkeys to that of humans - slumped posture, decreased interest in food and sex, and avoidance of conspecifics. Neuroskeptic poignantly argues that we don't know if this is an analog for depression (a clinical disorder) versus a normal emotional response (perhaps to living in a primate breeding facility?). Read more here.

And this week in dogs...

Dogs pretty good at telling you if you killed someone

Dogs do so many different things for humans, including cadaver detection. DogSpies tells us all about how dogs can sniff a carpet and indicate whether a dead body had been hanging out there. Pretty amazing stuff, but will it hold up in court?

and is pretty good good enough? K9s reveal racist tendencies

A review of Ferguson's police force exposed that 100% of the recipients of dog bites by trained police dogs were black men. This New Yorker article investigates how the biases of the trainer might train the dog who gets a pass, and who gets a bite...